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Chinese fears of Uyghur activism threaten to become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Its policies are likely to prompt jihadists,
including Uyghur foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, some of whom are exploring
new pastures in Central Asia closer to China’s borders, to put the People’s
Republic further up their target list.

Uyghur fighters speaking in videos
distributed by the Islamic State have vowed to return home to
“plant their flag in China.” One fighter, addressing evil Chinese Communist
infidel lackeys,” threatened that “in retaliation for the tears that flow from
the eyes of the oppressed, we will make your blood flow in rivers, by the will
of God.”

Mr. Sidike went on to say that “the three evil forces, using the name
of ethnics and religion, have been creating hatred between ethnic groups and
the mania to conduct terrorist activities, which greatly damage the shared
interests of Xinjiang people.” Mr. Sidike was referring to China’s portrayal of
terrorism, separatism and religious extremism as three evils.

The Communist Party’s Global Times asserted earlier that
the security situation in Xinjiang had been “turned around and
terror threats spreading from there to other provinces of China are also being
eliminated. Peaceful and stable life has been witnessed again in all of
Xinjiang… Xinjiang has been salvaged from the verge of massive turmoil. It has
avoided the fate of becoming ‘China's Syria’ or ‘China's Libya,’" the
paper said.

The Chinese embassy in Islamabad warned in December of possible attacks
targeting “Chinese-invested organizations and Chinese citizens” in Pakistan.
China’s ambassador, Yao Jing, advised the Pakistani interior ministry two
months earlier that Abdul Wali, an alleged Uyghur jihadist assassin, had
entered the country and was likely to attack Chinese targets.

Five
Chinese mining engineers were recently wounded in a suicide attack in
the troubled Pakistan province of Balochistan, a key node in the US$ 50 billion
plus China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) intended to link the strategic
port of Gwadar with Xinjiang and fuel economic development in the Chinese
region. The attack was claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) rather
than Uyghurs.

Chinese fears of renewed jihadist attacks on Chinese targets
in China and beyond are heightened by anti-Chinese sentiment in Central and
South Asia fuelled by groups effected by the crackdown in Xinjiang as well as
broader unease with the fallout of Chinese-funded projects related to China’s
infrastructure-driven Belt and Road initiative.

The province’s legislative assembly unanimously called on
the government in Islamabad to take up the issue. The women, many of whom are
practicing Muslims and don religious attire, are believed to have been detained
in re-education camps.

Concern in Tajikistan is mounting that the country may not
be able to service its increasing Belt and Road-related debt. Tajikistan was
forced in April to hand
over a gold mine to China as remuneration for $300 million in
funding to build a power plant. Impoverished Turkmenistan may have no choice
but to do the same with gas fields.

In a sign of the times, Russian
commentator Yaroslav Razumov noted that Kazakh youth recently
thwarted the marriage of a Kazakh national to a Chinese woman by denouncing it
on social media as unpatriotic.

Concern that Uighur militants exiting Syria and Iraq will
again target Xinjiang is one likely reason why Chinese officials suggested that
despite their adherence to the principle of non-interference in the affairs of
others China
might join the Syrian army in taking on militants in the
northern Syrian province of Idlib.

Syrian forces have
bombarded Idlib, a dumping ground for militants evacuated from other
parts of the country captured by the Syrian military and the country’s last
major rebel stronghold, in advance of an expected offensive.

Chinese participation in what likely would be a brutal and
messy campaign in Idlib would be China’s first major engagement in foreign
battle in decades.

China has similarly sought to mediate a reduction of tension
between Pakistan and Afghanistan in an effort to get them to cooperate in the
fight against militants and ensure that Uyghur jihadists are denied the ability
to operate on China’s borders. It has also sought to facilitate peace talks
between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Chinese officials told a recent gathering in Beijing of the
Afghan-Pakistan-China Trilateral Counter-Terrorism dialogue that militant
cross-border mobility represented a major threat that needed to be countered by
an integrated regional approach.

Chinese counterterrorism cooperation with various Muslim
nations could be put in jeopardy by an increasing number of media reports
spotlighting the crackdown in Xinjiang. Muslim governments, who have remained
conspicuously silent, are likely to be further embarrassed if Western criticism
of the crackdown snowballs.

“We believe that targeted sanctions will have an impact. At
a time when the Chinese government is seeking to expand its influence through
the Belt and Road Initiative, the last thing China’s leaders want is
international condemnation of their poor and abusive treatment of ethnic and
religious minorities,” the members of Congress said.

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Less than a week in office, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran
Khan has made blasphemy one of his first issues, empowering militants and
initiating international moves, long heralded by Saudi Arabia, that would
restrict press freedom by pushing for a global ban.

Mr. Khan, in his first address as prime minister to the
Pakistani Senate, said he intended to raise
the blasphemy issue in the United Nations and would work to achieve
a common stand within the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Mr. Khan spoke after the Senate adopted a resolution
condemning a plan by Geert Wilders, a militantly Islamophobic, far-right Dutch
opposition leader, who heads the second largest faction in parliament, to hold
a competition for cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed. Many Muslims see visual
depictions of the prophet as blasphemy.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte denounced
Mr. Wilder’s plan as “not respectful” and “provocative” but provoked
Pakistani ire by refusing to ban the competition on the grounds that he would
not curtail freedom of speech.

Mr. Khan, who has condemned killings in the name of
religion, has echoed TLP’s insistence on the principle of Khatam-i-Nabuwwat and
anti-blasphemy stance. “We are standing with Article 295c and will defend it,”
Khan said referring to a clause
in the constitution that mandates the death penalty for any
“imputation, insinuation or innuendo” against the Prophet Muhammad.

Mr. Khan’s move comes at a moment that Pakistan is walking a
fine line in the bitter rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran with whom
Pakistan, home to the world’s largest Shiite Muslim minority, shares a border.

Pakistan reluctantly allowed retired Pakistani general
Raheel Sharif to take command of the coalition in 2017. Pakistan has camouflaged
its reluctance to be drawn into the Saudi-Iranian rivalry by repeatedly
insisting that it would do what is needed to protect Islam’s most holy sites in
the kingdom.

Saudi efforts to exploit Pakistan’s precarious financial
position early in Mr. Khan’s prime ministership stem not only from Pakistan’s
urgent need for assistance but also uncertainty on what Saudi-Pakistani
relations will be.

Unlike, ousted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who
maintained close personal and commercial ties to the kingdom’s ruling family,
Mr. Khan is less beholden to the Saudis even if he shares much of their
ultra-conservatism.

Saudi Arabia arranged for Mr. Sharif and his family to go
into exile in 1999 after his then government was toppled in a military coup
that brought General Pervez Musharraf to power.

“Imran
Khan doesn’t feel personally obliged towards the Saudis, who have
long bought Pakistan and considered it their satellite state. If there’s
anything that could push his hand it’s the economic support provided by Riyadh,
given Pakistan’s fiscal needs,” said Shameem Akhtar, a veteran foreign policy
analyst, columnist and former dean of International Relations at Karachi
University.

If successful in his campaign for a global law banning
blasphemy, Mr. Khan will put himself, Pakistan and Islamic countries that join
him in his effort in a precarious position. It would likely open him his
country and the Muslim world to criticism of their silence about China’s crackdown
in the north-western province of Xinjiang on Uyghur Muslims that arguably amounts
to one of the most concerted attacks on Islam in recent history.

"Many Middle Eastern states have a poor human rights
record themselves — including when it comes to the treatment of religious minorities.
Many
exhibit a similar understanding of human rights to China's — that is, that
social stability trumps individual rights. This is how the Chinese government
has framed the presence of re-education camps and other repressive measures,” said
Chinese politics scholar Simone van Nieuwenhuizen.

Many Muslim nations, targets of significant Chinese
investment, beneficiaries of trade, and in some case heavily indebted to China,
feel they cannot afford to put their economic ties to the People’s Republic in
jeopardy.

Ultimately, that however could put Muslim leaders, including
Mr. Khan, between a rock and a hard place. They often seek to bolster their
domestic and international positions by burnishing their religious credentials.
Doing so while turning a blind eye to developments in China eventually could
catch up with them.

Saturday, August 25, 2018

It’s crunch time in Pakistan. Resolving Pakistan’s financial
crisis is likely to require newly appointed prime minister Imran Khan to not
only accept an International Monetary Fund (IMF) straightjacket but tackle his
and Pakistan’s convoluted relationship to militancy.

With the breeding ground for militancy built into the
country’s DNA and Mr. Khan owing his electoral victory in part to the spoiler
role played by militants in Pakistani elections, tackling militancy is a tall
order. Add to that Mr. Khan’s ultra-conservative social attitudes as well as
his abetting of militant concerns.

That would require both the acquiescence of Pakistan’s
powerful military and a reversal of Mr. Khan’s publicly espoused positions. In
many ways, Mr. Khan’s positions have been more in line with those of the
military, including his assertion that militancy in Pakistan was the result of
the United States’ ill-conceived war on terror rather than a history of support
of militant proxies that goes back to Pakistan’s earliest days, than he has
often been willing to acknowledge.

Juggling the demands of multi-lateral agencies and
Pakistan’s reality is likely to trap Mr. Khan in a Catch-22 of centrifugal
forces that include the roots of militancy enhanced by what Spanish sociologist
Manuel Castells termed “the
rise of the networked society.”

The appeal of the militants’ intolerance and supremacism,
rooted in a literal interpretation of the Qur’an and the teachings the Prophet
Mohammed, is reinforced by advances in information technology and proliferation
of media that in Mr. Castells’ approach created “a world of uncontrolled,
confusing change” that compelled people “to regroup around primary identities;
religious, ethnic, territorial, (and) national.”

Mr. Khan’s harsh reality is nonetheless likely to be also
shaped by Pakistan’s handling of men like Abdul Rehman al-Dakhil, a probable litmus
test of the seriousness of its anti-terrorism measures.

An alleged operational leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group
sanctioned by both the United Nations and the United States that openly
operates through proxies despite being banned in Pakistan, Mr. Al-Dakhil together
with two “financial facilitators” was last month identified by the US State
Department as a globally designated terrorist.

Hafez Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the 2008 attacks in
Mumbai and leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba and its front organization, Jamaat-ud-Dawa,
constitutes a similar litmus test as Mr. Khan seeks to demonstrate to FATF
compliance with agreed measures to counter money-laundering and terrorism
finance.

To demonstrate its sincerity, Pakistan in advance of the
election passed the Anti-Terrorism Ordinance of 2018, which gave groups
and individuals, including Mr. Saeed, designated by the UN as international
terrorists the same
status in Pakistan for the first time.

Pakistan also sought to curtail
the ability of Mr Saeed’s organizations to perform social and
charity work, a pillar of their popularity, by confiscating ambulances operated
by his charity, closing Jamaat-ud-Dawa
offices and handing control of its madrassas to provincial governments.

The fact that Mr. Saeed’s candidates and other militants did
not bag National Assembly seats in last month’s election would suggest at first
glance that it would be easier for the military and Mr. Khan to radically alter
their approach to militancy.

It also fails to take into account the extra-parliamentary
influence militants garner from their role as spoilers as well as their
societal roots.

“In Pakistan, parliamentary seats
alone do not a victory make. The religious political parties,
particularly the newcomer extremist variety, may not have won big, but they
have much to celebrate. Primarily, they can revel in their successful hijacking
of this election’s political narratives. Rather than moderate their positions
in order to compete, they managed to radicalise part of the mainstream
political discourse,” said journalist Huma Yusuf.

TLP, headed by Islamic scholar Khadim Hussain Rizvi,
garnered four percent of the vote even if it only won two seats in Sindh’s
provincial assembly and one in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Gallup survey said
anecdotal evidence showed that TLP votes pushed PML-N to second position in
many districts, “one reason for the loss of PML-N seats.”

Not surprisingly, Mr. Khan has echoed TLP’s insistence on the
principle of Khatam-i-Nabuwwat, or the finality of Mohammed’s prophethood, that
pervades Pakistan’s body politic. “We are standing with Article 295c and will
defend it,” Khan said referring to a clause
in the constitution that mandates the death penalty for any
“imputation, insinuation or innuendo” against the Prophet Muhammad.

Mr. Khan’s backing of the blasphemy clause that has served
as a ramming rod against minorities and a means to whip crowds into a frenzy
and at times turn them into lynch mobs and inspired vigilante killings came as
no surprise to Mr. Butt, the South Asia scholar, who noted shortly after the
election that “Khan’s ideology and beliefs on a host of dimensions are
indistinguishable from the religious hard-right.”

Yet, securing international support for inevitable
structural reform of the Pakistani economy will have to involve breaking with
militancy, implementing international standards in anti-money laundering and
terrorism finance, and pushing concepts of pluralism and tolerance that are
anathema to the religious hard-right. For Mr. Khan to succeed, that seemingly
will amount to having to square a circle.

Thursday, August 23, 2018

A possible
ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls
the Gaza Strip, is proving to be much more than an effort to end escalating
violence that threatens to spark yet another Middle Eastern war.

United Arab Emirates-backed Egyptian and United Nations
efforts to mediate an agreement, with the two countries’ nemesis, Qatar, in the
background, are about not only preventing months-long weekly protests along the
line that divides Gaza and Israel and repeated rocket and kite-mounted
incendiary device attacks on Israel that provoke Israeli military strikes in
response from spinning out of control.

They constitute yet another round in an Israeli-supported
effort to politically, economically and militarily weaken Hamas and pave the
road for a possible return to Palestine of Abu Dhabi-based former Palestinian
security chief Mohmmed Dahlan as a future successor to ailing Palestine
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Ironically, Israeli discussions with representatives of
Qatar that has long supported Gaza constitute recognition of the utility of
Qatar’s long-standing relations with Islamists and militants that the UAE,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain cited as the reason for their 15-month-old
diplomatic and economic boycott of the Gulf state.

Qatar has also been negotiating the return by Hamas of two
Israeli nationals held captive as well as the remains of two Israeli soldiers
killed in 2014 in Gaza.

Mr. Abbas’ economic warfare was the latest tightening of the
noose in a more than a decade-long Israeli-Egyptian effort to strangle Gaza
economically. Included in the moves to negotiate a long-term Israeli-Hamas
ceasefire are proposals for significant steps to ease the blockade.

In a statement
on Facebook, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said
Israel’s goal was to “remove the Hamas terror group from power, or force it to
change its approach, i.e., recognize Israel’s right to exist and accept the
principle of rebuilding in exchange for demilitarization.”

Mr Lieberman said he wanted to achieve that by “creating
conditions in which the average resident of Gaza will take steps to replace the
Hamas regime with a more pragmatic government” rather than through military
force.

Ironically, involving Qatar in the efforts to prevent Gaza
from escalating out of hand gives it a foot in the door as the UAE seeks to put
a Palestinian leader in place more attuned to Emirati and Saudi willingness to
accommodate the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to negotiate an
overall Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Mr. Abbas, like Hamas has rejected US mediation following
President Donald J. Trump’s recognition earlier this year of Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital.

Mr. Trump startled Israelis and Palestinians this week by
saying that Israel
would pay a "higher price" for his recognition of
Jerusalem and that Palestinians would "get something very good" in
return"because it's their turn
next." Mr. Trump gave no indication of what he meant.

The effort to negotiate a lasting ceasefire is the latest
round in a so far failed UAE-Egyptian effort to return Mr. Dahlan to Palestine
as part of a reconciliation between Hamas and Mr. Abbas’ Al Fatah movement. Mr.
Dahlan frequently does UAE
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed’s bidding.

US President George W. Bush described Mr. Dahlan during an
internecine Palestinian power struggle in 2007 as “our boy.” Mr.
Dahlan is believed to have close ties to Mr. Lieberman.

Hamas has since late March backed weekly mass protests by
Gazans demanding the right to return to homes in Israel proper that they lost
with the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 and in the 1967 Middle East war
in an effort to force an end to the economic stranglehold. Hamas leader Ismail
Haniyeh said this week that “thanks to these marches and resistance” an end
to Israel's decade-long blockade of Gaza was "around the corner.”

Some 170 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and
18,000 others wounded in Israel’s hard-handed response to the protests designed
to prevent protesters from breeching the fence that divides Gaza from Israel.

Ironically, Mr. Abbas may prove to be the loser as Israel
and Hamas inch towards a ceasefire arrangement that could ultimately give Mr.
Dahlan a role in administering the Gaza Strip.

"Gaza
has become a de facto state as it comprises a set area with a
central body that governs the population, has an army and conducts foreign
policy. So, in a way, countries have to be pragmatic and negotiate with Hamas.
Israel's main interest is security—a period of complete calm in Gaza—and it is
willing to do what is necessary to achieve this,” said Giora Eiland, former head
of Israel's National Security Council.

"Until recently, Cairo insisted that Abbas re-assume
control over Gaza, which Hamas would not accept, specifically the call for it
to disarm. Now, Egypt understands that this is not realistic and is only
demanding that Hamas prevent (the Islamic State's affiliate) in the Sinai from
smuggling in weaponry. The only party that is unhappy with this arrangement is
Abbas. who has been left behind. But this is his problem,” Mr., Eiland added.

A Hamas-Israel ceasefire and the possible return of Mr.
Dahlan are likely to be but the first steps in a UAE-Egyptian-Israeli backed
strategy to engineer the emergence of a Palestinian leadership more amenable to
negotiating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a geo-political
environment that favours Israel.

With the jury still out Israelis, Palestinians and their
regional allies have nonetheless been put on alert as they manoeuvre to ensure
their place in whatever emerges from efforts to reengineer the political
landscape.

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

The Middle East and North Africa are embroiled in multiple
transitions, involving social, economic and political change at home, and
struggles for power across the region dominated by the rivalry between Saudi
Arabia and Iran. The often volatile and violent transitions amount to battles
for survival of autocratic regimes and confrontations between either
counterrevolutionary or autocratic forces, who oppose political change and see
limited and controlled reform as a survival strategy, and forces seeking
fundamental change of economic and political systems. The battles are overlaid
by great power competition in a world in which the balance between the United
States, China and Russia is in flux and regional powers like Saudi Arabia,
Iran, and Israel are flexing their muscles. While the name of the game is
beyond doubt transition, the question remains: transition to what?

The latest crisis in Turkey’s boom-bust economy raises
questions about a development model in which countries like China and Turkey witness
moves towards populist rule of one man who encourages massive borrowing to
drive economic growth.

It’s a model minus the one-man rule that could be repeated
in Pakistan as newly sworn-in prime minister Imran Khan, confronted with a
financial crisis, decides whether to turn to the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) or rely on China and Saudi Arabia for relief.

In Turkey and China, the debt-driven approach sparked remarkable
economic growth with living standards being significantly boosted and huge
numbers of people being lifted out of poverty. Yet, both countries with Turkey
more exposed, given its greater vulnerability to the swings and sensitivities
of international financial markets, are witnessing the limitations of the
approach.

So are, countries along China’s Belt and Road, including
Pakistan, that leaped head over shoulder into the funding opportunities made
available to them and now see themselves locked into debt traps that in the
case of Sri Lanka and Djibouti have forced them to effectively turn over to
China control of critical national infrastructure or like Laos that have become
almost wholly dependent on China because it owns the bulk of their
unsustainable debt.

Mr. Mahathir won elections in May on a campaign that
asserted that Mr. Razak had ceded sovereignty to China by agreeing to Chinese
investments that failed to benefit the country and threaten to drown it in debt.

Debt-driven growth could also prove to be a double-edged
sword for China itself even if it is far less dependent than others on imports,
does not run a chronic trade deficit, and doesn’t have to borrow heavily in
dollars.

With more than half the increase in global debt over the
past decade having been issued as domestic loans in China, China’s
risk, said Ruchir Sharma, Morgan Stanley’s Chief Global Strategist
and head of Emerging Markets Equity, is capital fleeing to benefit from higher
interest rates abroad.

“Right now Chinese can earn the same interest rates in the
United States for a lot less risk, so the motivation to flee is high, and will
grow more intense as the Fed raises rates further,” Mr. Sharma said referring
to the US Federal Reserve.

Rejecting economic theory and wisdom, Mr. Erdogan has sought
for years to fight an alleged ‘interest rate lobby’ that includes an ever-expanding
number of financiers and foreign powers seeking to drive Turkish interest rates
artificially high to damage the economy by insisting that low interest rates
and borrowing costs would contain price hikes.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) warned
late last year that Turkey’s “gross external financing needs to cover the
current account deficit and external debt repayments due within a year are
estimated at around 25 per cent of GDP in 2017, leaving the country exposed to
global liquidity conditions.”

With two international credit rating agencies reducing
Turkish debt to junk status in the wake of Turkey’s economically
fought disputes with the United States, the government risks its access to
foreign credits being curtailed, which could force it to extract more money
from ordinary Turks through increased taxes. That in turn would raise the spectre
of recession.

Nevertheless, as The Wall Street Journal concluded, the
vulnerability of Turkey’s debt-driven growthwas such that it
only took two tweets by US President Donald J. Trump announcing
sanctions against two Turkish ministers and the doubling of some tariffs to accelerate
the Turkish lira’s tailspin.

Mr. Erdogan may not immediately draw the same conclusion,
but it is certainly one that is likely to serve as a cautionary note for
countries that see debt, whether domestic or associated with China’s infrastructure-driven
Belt and Road initiative, as a main driver of growth.

Addressing the criticism of the 41-nation APG, which reports
to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international anti-money
laundering and anti-terrorism watchdog that earlier this year put Pakistan on a
grey list with the prospect of blacklisting it is key to a possible Pakistani
request for a US$ 12 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.

A
US demand that any IMF package exclude funding for paying off Chinese loans
coupled with the APG/FATF criticism, against a backdrop of the Pakistani
military’s efforts to nudge militants into the mainstream of Pakistani politics
and the incoming prime minister’s mixed statements on extremism, could push Mr.
Khan to turn to China and Saudi Arabia for rescue, a move that would likely not
put Pakistan in the kind of straightjacket it needs to reform and restructure
its troubled economy.

The APG, which just ended talks with Pakistani officials,
has scheduled follow-up visits to Pakistan in September and October to monitor
Pakistani progress in addressing its concerns, which focus on legal provisions
governing non-profit and charitable organisations, transparency in the
country’s beneficial ownership regime and the handling of reports on suspicious
financial transactions.

Chinese loans have so far kept Pakistan afloat with state-owned
banks extending more
than US$5 billion in loans in the past year. PTI officials said this
week that China has promised the incoming government further loans to keep
Pakistan afloat and enable it to avoid reverting to the IMF, which would demand
transparency in the funding of projects related to China’s US$50 billion plus
investment in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a crown jewel of its
Belt and Road initiative.

And that is where the rub is. Despite Chinese officials
reportedly urging Pakistan to reduce its deficit, neither China nor Saudi
Arabia, which has offered to lend
Pakistan US$4 billion are likely to impose the kind of regime that
would put the country, which has turned to the IMF 12 times already for help,
on a sustainable financial path.

Relying on China and Saudi Arabia would likely buy Pakistan
time but ultimately not enable it to avoid the consequences of blacklisting by
FATF, which would severely limit its access to financial markets, if it fails
to put in place and implement a credible anti-money laundering and terrorism
finance regime

State-run television warned in a primetime
broadcast that foreign agents could turn legitimate protests
stemming from domestic anger at the government’s mismanagement of the economy
and corruption into “incendiary calls for regime change” by inciting violence
that would provoke a crackdown by security forces and give the United States
fodder to tackle Iran.

“The ordinary protesting worker would be hapless in the face
of such schemes, uncertain how to stop his protest from spiralling into
something bigger, more radical, that he wasn’t calling for,” journalist Azadeh
Moaveni quoted in a
series of tweets the broadcast as saying.

The warning stroked with the Trump administration’s strategy
to escalate the protests that have been continuing for months and generate the
kind of domestic pressure that would force Iran to concede by squeezing it
economically with the imposition of harsh sanctions.

US officials, including President Donald J. Trump’s national
security advisor John Bolton, a
long-time proponent of Iranian regime change, have shied away from
declaring that they were seeking a change of government, but have indicated
that they hoped sanctions would fuel economic discontent.

Mr. Bolton insisted that US policy was to put
"unprecedented pressure" on Iran to change its behaviour”, not change
the regime.

The implication of his remarks resembled Israeli attitudes
three decades ago when officials argued that if the Palestine Liberation
Organization were to recognize Israel it would no longer be the PLO but the
PPLO, Part of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In other words, the kind of policy changes the Trump
administration is demanding, including an end to its ballistic program and
support for regional proxies, by implication would have to involve regime
change.

A string of recent, possibly unrelated incidents involving
Iran’s ethnic minorities coupled with various other events could suggest that
the United States and Saudi Arabia covertly are also playing with separate
plans developed in Washington and Riyadh to destabilize Iran by stirring unrest
among non-Persian segments of the Islamic republic’s population.

Mr. Bolton last year before assuming office drafted
at the request of Mr. Trump’s then strategic advisor, Steve Bannon, a plan
that envisioned US support “for the democratic Iranian opposition,” “Kurdish
national aspirations in Iran, Iraq and Syria,” and assistance for Baloch in the
Pakistani province of Balochistan and Iran’s neighbouring Sistan and
Balochistan province as well as Iranian Arabs in the oil-rich Iranian province
of Khuzestan.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said last weekend that they had killed
ten militants near the Iranian border with Iraq. “A well-equipped
terrorist group ... intending to infiltrate the country from the border area of
Oshnavieh to foment insecurity and carry out acts of sabotage was ambushed and
at least 10 terrorists were killed in a heavy clash,” the Guards said.

Similarly, this weekend’s ethnic soccer protests are rooted
in a history of football unrest in the Iranian provinces of East Azerbaijan and
Khuzestan that reflect long-standing economic and environmental grievances but
also at times at least in oil-rich Khuzestan potentially had Saudi fingerprints
on them.

Video clips of Azeri supporters of Tabriz-based Traktor Sazi
FC chanting
‘Death to the Dictator” in Tehran’s Azadi stadium during a match
against Esteghlal FC went viral on social media after a live broadcast on state
television was muted to drown the protest out. A sports commentator blamed the
loss of sound on a network disruption.

A day earlier, Iranian
Arab fans clashed with security forces in a stadium in the Khuzestan
capital of Ahwaz during a match between local team Foolad Khuzestan FC and
Tehran’s Persepolis FC. The fans reportedly shouted slogans reaffirming their
Arab identity.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arabs have a long history of
encouraging Iranian Arab opposition and troubling the minority’s relations with
the government.

Iranian distrust of the country’s Arab minority has been
further fuelled by the fact that the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran or
Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), a controversial exiled opposition group that enjoys
the support of prominent serving and former Western officials, including some
in the Trump administration, has taken credit for a number of the protests in
Khuzestan. The group advocates the violent overthrow of the regime in Tehran.

“The mullahs must go, the ayatollah must go, and they must
be replaced by a democratic government which Madam Rajavi represents. Freedom
is right around the corner … Next year I want to have this convention in Tehran,”
Mr. Giuliani told this year’s rally, referring to Maryam Rajavi, the leader of
the Mujahedeen who is a cult figure to the group.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile